Paintings by Frederic E. Church, N.A. Special exhibition at the Metropolitan museum of art, May 28th to Oct. 15th

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FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

A brief note upon Mr. Church and his work is appropriate upon the
first exhibition of a collection of some of his most important pictures.

For more than a quarter of a century Mr. Church has been withdrawn
by physical infirmity from the ranks of the producers of art. His career was
stopped when he was in the maturity of his powers, and still retaining the
enthusiasm of youth.

The spirit made an heroic effort to conquer the physical disabilities;
the right hand refusing to do its work, he learned to paint with his left hand ;
he maintained to the end of his life his indomitable spirit; he planned great
works ; he was full of ideas which struggled for expression ; but inflammatory
rheumatism is a foe that the artist fights in vain. Mr. Church could only
busy himself with his art in a fitful way. Fortunately he could rest upon his
reputation, caring little for the notoriety that depends, either in literature or
art, upon constantly engaging the public attention by a new performance.

He had already, while comparatively young, attained a commanding
eminence as a landscape artist, abroad as well as at home, and had done for
American art, in his field, what Irving did for its literature.

We can scarcely overestimate the debt of America to Mr. Church in
teaching it to appreciate the grandeur and beauty of its own scenery, and by
his work at home and in tropical lands in inculcating a taste and arousing an
enthusiasm for landscape art, — that is, landscape art as an expression of the
majesty and beauty of the divine manifestation in nature.

During the quarter of a century that this spirited artist was forced to
be little more than a spectator, there have been great changes and fluctuations
in the world of art, and many waves of shifting public taste. From time to

time expectation has been excited of new methods, that were to make obsolete
all the canons of art of the historic masters, just as in poetry new lights dis-
covered that form was a bondage to inspiration.

Mr. Church did not share these delusions, yet it is an interesting matter
of speculation how the new movement might have affected his work if he had
actively continued in it, with his superb equipment and his vast experience.

Mr. Church was himself a pioneer and an adventurer. He was born
in Hartford, May 4, 1826, in a New England atmosphere that was as far as
possible from being artistic. Independently of his surroundings, he began
before he was sixteen to teach himself drawing with the aid of very insufficient
help. Through the influence of friends, Thomas Cole, the first American
landscape artist, was induced to take him as a pupil, the first he had ever
received, and it was with Mr. Cole in his Catskill home, that Mr. Church
was stimulated in his love of nature, and began to learn how to interpret it.

This was with him no return to nature out of conventionality, as was
effected by Sir John Millais and Holman Hunt, the two exponents of the pre-
Raphaelite school in England, but it was an original devotion. And he came
to nature not to copy its external features, but with the real inspiration of art,
to interpret it. He was doing in fact, and without knowing it, very much
what Millet and Rousseau were doing in France, and much in the same way.
He was a religious student of nature as they were. He learned to draw as
they learned, with absolute fidelity to the forms of nature. He made in-
finitely painstaking studies both with pencil and brush. He was as careful a
reproducer of nature in details as was Sir John Millais. He came to know
his subject in this way. But his paintings were not studies. He aspired to
interpret nature in its higher spiritual and esthetic meaning.

Millet brought to the knowledge of the world the peasant of Brittany;
Rousseau, whose passion was for the noblest product of nature, the tree, taught
ihe world to see it in its beauty. All these three artists painted their pictures,

in which they put their own personaHty and genius, in the studio, from their
own faithful studies of reality.

Sir John Millais surprised the London conventionality by the elaborate,
the minute details of his foregrounds and the marvelous effects of his back-
grounds, direct realities of outdoor work.

Mr. Church at the same time, as if this movement were general in art,
was producing those wonderful foregrounds, in which there was a knowledge
of botany as well as of form, and which a later age, an age of inspiration, calls
photographic.

But this is not the place to push this discussion any further than is
necessary to show the character of Mr. Church's work, and to look at him
rather as an interpreter than a copier of nature ; but we should not lose sight
of his extraordinary technical facility and ability. He was able to interpret
nature because he knew it in its most intimate details and his hand was trained
to express what he saw and felt. If the young artist would see how technical
perfection of form rises into power and the very life and movement of nature,
let him study the painting of rapids in Church's Niagara. He had a wonder-
fully true feeling for color, for harmony. The whole surface of his picture
was expressive, and every square inch helped the noble effect he sought to
produce.

No other person of his own generation, certainly, had such power of
aerial perspective, or of giving the relative value of distances. These are great
achievements that no change of fashion can make obsolete. In his composition
Mr. Church has shown the qualities of the great Masters, orderly, lucidity and
harmony of design, with the highest poetic sentiment.

Mr. Church died on the 7th of April, 1 900, in New York, on his
return from Mexico, which had been his winter resort for many years. In
years and physical infirmity he was seventy-four. In his spirit, his heroic

cheerfulness, he was still young, hopeful of the world, the stanchest and
most helpful of friends, and as clear and sweet in his Christian character
as he was decided in his luminous rendition of the atmosphere of the
distant mountains of his great pictures. He saw and felt the divinity in
both worlds.

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

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CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION LIBRARIES

nmaa N40.1.C56N5
Paintings by Frederic E. Church, N.A.

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